Read 'em and weep with WattPad online site

Sunday

Apr 20, 2014 at 6:00 AM

The refined grist of hundreds of conversations has taught us that everybody wants to be a writer. Now they can.

You and your Uncle Max can publish their fiction and nonfiction on WattPad, an online site. It also has hundreds of free classics such as "Jane Eyre," "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." The website, Wattpad.com, draws 15 million readers a month. And posts more than 1.5 million new stories.

Some are from best-selling writers, like Margaret Atwood, author of "The Handmaid's Tale." But most seem to be from teenagers, who display an inordinate interest in sex. Who knew? Random example: "I'm the SuperModel in a Boys Boarding School." Not only are these teenagers prolific, so to speak, but display a loose grip on grammar and spelling which does not speak well of their classroom experience.

Does anybody read this stuff? Well, "How to Tame a Bad Boy," has almost 3 million readers, although the teenage author admits she's just messing around and doesn't know if she has a story yet. Reader comments are posted under each book's description, Facebook style, and some viewers make plot suggestions. Most books are written in short bursts; a 70-page book typically has 20 chapters — not necessarily connected. Short attention spans are the rule of the day.

Authors with a lot of followers are getting attention from traditional publishing houses. For instance, Abigail Gibbs, now 24, got a three-book deal from Harper Collins. Her first book, "Dinner With a Vampire," written when she was 19, had 17 million reads and is now sold on Amazon. In the nonfiction section of the website is "How to Survive Wattpad," with tips on getting more readers. The tips can be good but the sentences struggle. Example: "Do you want to get your book popular?"

Nobody gets paid for their work, and nobody is charged for reading it. Over the years many people have said to us: "I know my life would make a good novel." Well, here's a place to lay it out. We are approaching a time, as Andy Warhol said, when everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Runaway Game Costs

In the Android world of tablets and phones, game costs pile up. We heard about a child who spent $70 on her new adventure game before mother caught on. Most of the money for these games goes for buying "equipment." Like: everybody needs a light sword these days. Where have you been?

In response to criticism, the Google Play store now lets you set a password requirement for purchases offered within a game. To use that, tap the Google Play Store, then the menu button on your phone. From there, tap "settings" and look under "User Controls." For iPhone users, you can set up a password requirement in "settings." Tap "General" and then "Restrictions."

If you want the device to shut off after a specific time, there's an app for that. For Android, it's "Kids Place." For iPhone, it's "Parental Time Lock."

Chinese Cubes

"Chinese Cubes Starter Pack" is $149 from ChineseCubes.com. It's a system of learning Chinese by moving blocks, each of which has a Chinese character, a meaning in English and a simplified way of writing the word or phrase. Using the blocks in various combinations can produce 2,500 phrases.

The starter pack comes with a web cam, something nearly every computer has these days, but the program won't let you go on until you plug it in their web cam. This is unfortunate, because their web cam doesn't always recognize the blocks you place in front of it. If you keep doing it, however, the instructor built into the software will finally acknowledge that you got it right.

In the early stages, the instructor shows you exactly what to look for; it's just a matter of going through a pile of 45 blocks. Then you practice pronunciation and use a writing pad to draw the characters.

We couldn't find any reviews for this learning system, so Joy spent several hours with it as her obligation to promote understanding between nations. ("Char siu" means barbecued pork.) She thought it was fun, despite the frustration when the web cam couldn't distinguish the blocks. (Bob says he knew a guy who had a Chinese friend write out a note in Chinese characters that he could hand to waiters at restaurants. It said: "I'll have what the people at the next table are having.")

The iPad Mini

Joy's Kindle Fire went into a coma for several months and the battery wouldn't charge. So we got an iPad Mini, a smaller version of the iPad for $278 from Amazon.

Every reviewer says that if you've got an original iPad, which we do, you'll be wowed by the screen resolution of the iPad Mini. Well, we're often cranky, so we weren't wowed. In fact, at first we didn't even notice this great improvement. But the real joy (sorry about that) of the smaller iPad is that it's lightweight and easy to hold.

The iPad Mini gave us a chance to test all those apps that supposedly only work on the newest Apple devices. New or old, they all seem to work. They all look nice, but if we hadn't thought we needed to replace the Kindle Fire, we wouldn't have bothered. Strange world: The Kindle Fire started working again right after we bought the iPad Mini. We live in a very mysterious universe.

The Numbers Report

Microsoft surveyed over 10,000 people ages 18 and up from all over the world and this is what they found out:

•Only 36 percent of respondents limit the amount of personal information they put on the Web.

•Only 37 percent look for ways to prevent identity theft.

•Fifteen percent of respondents say they or someone they know was a victim of identity theft.